The 25-year-old collection agency representative elected to the commission in November said Saturday that no one told him he couldn't drive.

He was released from the Brevard County Sheriff's Office booking room in Melbourne after he paid a $250 bond Friday night.

Police stopped Brandes in his car at Cherry Drive and Oak Street in Melbourne Beach shortly after 8 p.m. Friday. The commissioner's license had been suspended because he did not make a court appearance earlier this month after being cited in a traffic accident.

Brandes said Saturday he did not know he could not drive ''due to a little bit of ignorance on my part.'' He said sheriff's officials did not tell him he could not drive when he talked to them about a notice of failure to appear in court that he received.

Brandes said he also had talked with Melbourne Beach police officers before the arrest and ''somebody should have said something to me about the suspension in professional courtesy.''

Had he been an average citizen, he said, he probably would have been asked not to drive rather than arrested. He speculated that his arrest might have been politically motivated because the town commission decided Thursday night to investigate the operating procedures of the police department and to investigate the management practices of Police Chief William White.

''I was a catalyst in ordering an investigation into the police department,'' he said.

White denied those charges Saturday. ''If anybody drives with a suspended license, they get arrested,'' he said.

Police Capt. James McCarthy, the supervisor of the officer who made the arrest, said drivers whose privileges are suspended for accumulated points against them are handled less harshly than those whose privileges are suspended because of failure to appear in court.

McCarthy said, ''In police work, failure to appear is where someone scoffs at the justice system.''